The Orientalist

Tom Reiss first came across Nussimbaum when he went to the ex-USSR to research Russia's oil reserves, and discovered a novel instead. Written on the eve of the Second World War, "Ali and Nino" is a captivating love story set in the glamorous city of Baku, Azerbaijan's capital. The novel's depiction of a lost cosmopolitan society is enthralling, but equally intriguing is the identity of the man who wrote it. Who was Kurban Said, its supposed author? And why did he and his book fade into obscurity? For five years, Reiss tracked Said's protean identity from a wealthy Jewish childhood in Baku, to a romantic adolescence in Persia on the run from the Bolsheviks, and an exile in Berlin as bestselling author and self-proclaimed Muslim prince. The result is a thoroughly unexpected picture of the twentieth-century - of the origins of our ideas about race and religious self-definition, and of the roots of modern fanaticism.

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"Spellbinding history . . . part detective yarn, part author biography, part travel saga . . . The Orientalist is completely fascinating."<br>-The Dallas Morning News <br>"Rarely in the literary annals of identity confusion has there been a tale as gripping. . . . A captivating and disquieting parable of the mystery of identity . . . truly page-turning."<br>-The Miami Herald <br>"Sympathetic, elegant, and extraordinarily affecting . . . Reiss's storytelling panache [is] spellbinding."<br>-Los Angeles Times Book Review <br>"Thrilling, novelistic and rich with the personal and political madness of early-twentieth-century Europe." <br>-Entertainment Weekly <br>"A brainy, nimble, remarkable book."<br>-Chicago Tribune <br>"A wondrous tale, beautifully told . . . mesmerizing, poignant, and almost incredible. Reiss, caught up in the spell of Essad Bey, has turned around and worked some magic of his own."<br>-The New York Times <br>"For sheer reading pleasure . . . this bookf

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Tom Reiss has written about politics and culture in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

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